Yangon, Sep 26 (DPA) Hundreds of riot police and soldiers were stationed Wednesday at Yangon’s City Hall in preparation for a crackdown on a monk-led rebellion that has seized the city for the last week.
At least 12 truckloads, each of about 40 police and soldiers, were dispatched Tuesday night to City Hall after tens of thousands of monks defied a government order to end their protest marches and return to their temples.
City Hall is near the Sule Pagoda in the centre of downtown Yangon, where the monks have congregated, joined by thousands of laymen, over the last four days in a show of defiance against Myanmar’s ruling junta.
The marching monks appeared determined to take to the streets again Wednesday, despite signs that a confrontation is looming. As on past days, they are to first meet about noon at the Shwedagon Pagoda and then march on to Sule Pagoda.
“Most monks will march,” one Yangon temple abbot told DPA. “We are even ready to die.”
Yangon’s barefoot rebellion that started Sep 18 drew up to 100,000 followers Monday and Tuesday, without reprisals from the regime.
Now, the signs are looming that the junta is ready to spill blood, as they did in September 1988 when the army unleashed its fury on pro-democracy mass demonstrations, killing up to 3,000 people including hundreds of protesting monks.
Around midnight, the government announced via public loudspeakers that a curfew had been imposed in the city from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m., until the situation returned to normal.
Yangon General Hospital has been instructed to clear wards in preparation for an influx of patients, hospital sources said.
In 1988, Myanmar was rocked by nationwide rallies against the military regime’s incompetent rule, which had dragged the country down from one of the wealthiest in Asia prior to World War II to an economic basket case by 1987.
Economic hardships are partly behind the latest protests.
Without warning or consultations, the government more than doubled fuel prices on Aug 15, exacerbating overnight the plight of impoverished Myanmar people. The country has suffered double-digit inflation since 2006.
Anti-inflation protests started building on Aug 19 in Yangon, led by former student activists and opposition politicians. Earlier this month, monks took up the movement.
Myanmar’s 400,000-member Buddhist monkhood has a long history of political activism, having played a pivotal role in the independence struggle against Britain in 1947 and the anti-military demonstrations of 1988, which ended in bloodshed.
Observers have been amazed that Myanmar’s military rulers have waited so long to suppress the monks’ rebellion and attribute it to China’s influence on the pariah state.
“I can see no other explanation for their restraint,” a European diplomat said. “They’ve shot monks in the past.”